Author's Notes: I needed time to straighten out RL and its many priorities. 'Nuff said. Pretend my year-long hiatus didn't happen and let's move on.
Someone once postulated that Naruto actually occurred not in Japan, but somewhere more like China. I was reviewing the map and couldn't help but draw the same conclusion. This new realization has caused me to consider several important changes—nothing major, but if you read it with the abovementioned knowledge, it'll make more sense to you.
Dedication: To those who waited patiently.
Whilst Time Turns
Chapter Two: A Variance in Insanity
Sasuke slumped onto the ground with a weak grunt. It took him a few moments him to realize that his screams had gone largely unheard. It was a disquieting realization. Usually he would hear sounds of Naruto or even Karin scampering close by now.
Oh wait. They were dead.
Where am I?
He could see training logs. He could hear the sound of trees and wind. The air smelled of city, which was odd, since Sasuke usually made a point of avoiding society. Like he had repeatedly told Orochimaru, there was only one person he really wanted to kill and only one city he wanted to destroy.
Although in the end, what had it mattered?
Sasuke crawled upright again. Abandoning the training ground without a backward glance, he blindly made his way north, following his gut instincts as he mentally told himself to stay closer to camp from now on. But as he drew toward the nearest concrete building, he knew.
Even without the faded but proud Uchiha emblem, Sasuke would have known.
Konohagakure.
Sasuke shook violently. But screaming had drained him and he could only accept his strange, alien surroundings.
Konohagakure.
With a shudder he took one step forward. And then another. And then another. Bit by bit, the Uchiha compound came into focus. It was suspiciously clean. Surely Hinata couldn't have-
No. She would have left the moment he did.
It made Sasuke wonder if they'd given the buildings away in his absence. But he could see no sign of a foreign inhabitant. It was as if the Uchiha Compound had been frozen in time since his defection-his second defection.
Perhaps it had. It wouldn't be the strangest thing he'd seen lately.
His body seemed surprisingly healthy, even if it did feel foreign. Although he could feel bruises, his bones all seemed to be intact.
At least his back felt a hell lot better than it had did underneath that damn rain.
Sasuke stopped to lean against a wall. He waslightheaded. His head still throbbed with a dull headache and his vision blurred in and out of focus.
Okay, not so healthy after all.
"Damn," he hissed. Forcing his eyes to focus on the floor in front of him, Sasuke continued walking. He found himself heading toward his part of the compound—a home he had abandoned twice, once a long time ago, and a second time quite recently.
Konohagakure.
The door swung open quietly as if it had been oiled just yesterday. There were shoes, shoes that fit his suddenly small feet, lined up along the wall. The hallways were bare and clean.
It really was as if he had never left at all.
Sasuke felt his headache thicken. Shaking his head, he groped toward the bathroom blindly. He flicked open the switch and then naturally glanced at himself in the mirror—only to curse loudly and jump backwards in barely restrained shock. His dark eyes widened and his still baby-fat-laden-cheeks went slack.
He touched the icy mirror. It was real. It felt real.
Twenty-year-old Sasuke stared with horrified eyes at his much-too-young face.
He did the first thing he could think of. But even after he smashed the mirror to bits, he caught a glimpse of his smooth, unscarred cheek in the glass shards.
Ignoring his bloody hands, Sasuke whipped around to run out of the house. But from the light of the bathroom he caught a glimpse of the kitchen calendar.
The year taunted him.
Sasuke's memories welled up and suddenly he could feel all the old feelings of Konoha washing over his crazed mind. He had always done his best to suppress them, never wanted to think about them, but at the heart of his old home his memories broke free like a river surging through a broken dam.
If the calendar was right, he would be twelve.
Impossible.
It was impossible. Utterly impossible.
But it all felt so real.
The headache swelled and then swamped him. Sasuke's mind could only take so much. As he slumped onto the floor in an exhausted faint, he thought that traitorous word one last time.
Konohagakure.
Hyuuga Hinata ran until her lungs burned.
In this alien body, it didn't take a very long time.
"Damn it," she murmured underneath her ragged breath. Her too-short legs and sprained ankle made her stumble more than once in her run and she now sported quite a few colorful bruises.
Although the run hadn't been as long as she liked, it had cleared her head. But more importantly, the run had allowed her to coast through Konohagakure. In the dead of the night, few bothered to notice or interfere with a small, shadow-hugging girl.
Although she'd cursed her Byagukan more than a few times for all the strain and stress it brought her, it certainly had its uses. With eyes that could cross hundreds of meters and see through walls, Hinata had managed to see her friends' sleeping faces. It had been exhausting and emotional, but worth it.
Hinata ruefully rubbed her cheeks. She could still feel the saltiness of her tears.
Despite the impossibility of the situation, the cold hard facts remained that she was in somewhere in the past. Konohagakure hadn't looked so beautiful and so strong in years. While she didn't know the exact date, she could guess it was somewhere around her Academy-Genin years judging from the how small everyone else had looked. Naruto had looked particularly tiny.
Hinata smiled softly. Even if it was a genjutsu, a genjutsu so refined that even her Byagukan could not pierce it, everything felt so real that Hinata was willing to hope.
She needed this hope. It was the only thing keeping her going.
Konohagakure.
Hinata resisted the urge to go sneak a glance at Naruto again. It would be excessive. It would be inappropriate as Hyuuga Head.
Because no matter what reality she was in, she was still the Clan Head of the Hyuuga.
It would be inappropriate as Hyuuga Hinata.
Because he was married-even if he wasn't married yet.
Twenty-year-old Hinata, sole survivor of the Hyuuga massacree, felt no tears and only an insignificant bitterness in her tongue. There were more important things to address right now.
Beautiful Konohagakure.
Although she would have given anything to just run until blackness and nothingness consumed her, she stopped.
She turned around. It was time to go back home.
He woke up to the sizzling smell of just-steamed meat buns.
It'd been a long time since he'd had real food. Mind you, he didn't mean the shitty ration bars you gobbled down as you ran, jump, flew from one branch to another, trying to save that last civilian, kill that last enemy, or drag home that last body. Real food.
It'd also been a long time since he'd slept so soundly—in a real bed too.
The mattress was almost too soft, but Nara Shikamaru forced himself to roll out of bed. Idly wondering whose bed he had stolen—there were never enough to go around—he dropped onto the floor and instinctively began to stretch the kinks out of his body. As his eyes sharpened on the hardwood floor, he suddenly realized how oddly clean it was of blood. Although his mind lurched, he robotically rolled onto his stomach and began his daily push ups without missing a beat.
He'd forgotten that things weren't quite right.
"Fuck," Shikamaru hissed at the floor.
Last night had been sensational to say the least. Confronted with the ghosts of his father and mother—he must have been hallucinating—he'd thrown what must have been the most epic tantrum in his life. For a man who found most things beyond cloud-watching to be 'too troublesome', it was amazing he'd managed to fall back asleep at all.
Still, regardless of hallucinations or not, it still didn't explain the existence of his old room. In the stark daylight everything seemed to be lot less nightmarish, but also a hell lot more confusing and awkward.
Shikamaru wanted to dismiss the possibility of a genjutsu because everything just seemed too vivid, too realistic—but genjutsu was the only logical explanation for his predicament.
No one ever really went back in time.
"Shika, time for breakfast!"
Someone, be it god or human, had a serious vendetta against him. That same someone was going to seriously pay for dragging his parents into this.
"This has definitely got to be a new all-time low," Shikamaru muttered as the painfully familiar chakra signatures moved about in the kitchen.
"Shika!"
But even if this was all part of some sick psychotic's imagination, something in Shikamaru couldn't bear to ignore his mother. Without even a hint of his old characteristic groan and mocking disinterest, Shikamaru rolled onto his feet and dressed quickly. He stopped only to glare briefly at baby-fat preteen in the finger-smudged mirror on the wall. If messing with dead parents was sadistic, putting him back into his twelve-year-old self was just plain annoying.
Damn it, where was that hairband of his?
"Shika! Get your butt down here!"
Shikamaru grumbled darkly and practically flew down the stairs. He'd managed to get his ponytail tied by the time his 'mother' appeared at the kitchen doorway.
"Lazy as usual aren't you?" she said fondly. Even if she had a few wrinkles and scars on her hands, Nara Yoshino was a vision in her yellow apron and her fond smile. It made Shikamaru slam into the wall.
"Shika!" the person that looked like his mother rushed forward.
Shikamaru shielded away. He can't—couldn't let that thing touch him.
His mother was dead. Cremated and her ashes left to drift over Konohagakure.
Still, the look of dismay that flashed over her face at his refusal hurt; it was all too real and too similar to memory. Shikamaru couldn't find it in himself to yell at her.
"Shika?" that thing asked carefully.
"I'm going to have breakfast," he said gruffly, dismissing the growing bruise on his shoulder. Even through the fear and growing panic, his stomach screamed for food. He pushed past hastily.
Fuck was that his dad in the kitchen?
"Shika, it's time to go," she said.
"Yes." The succinct and brief answer surprised Nara Yoshino, almost as much as it had surprised her to see her son awake, dressed, and sitting at the kitchen table after only two calls. Despite his genius, Shikamaru was notoriously lazy and every morning was a war of wills between two.
Well, at least it normally was.
Shikaku's eyebrows rose when he noticed his son's prompt arrival for breakfast. He said nothing however, and only nudged the food in Shikamaru's direction.
After putting away her apron, Yoshino sat down at the table as well. She raised her chopsticks to her mouth but kept her eyes on her son.
He ate quickly. Efficiently. Shikamaru had always been a rather thoughtful and picky eater. The Shikamaru sitting at her table today ate with an almost thoughtless drive to consume food. He even ate his vegetables, which he usually avoided as if it were the plague.
There was something horribly off about her son.
Yoshino opened her mouth to say something but a quick look from her husband made her decide otherwise. Hiding her uncertain expression behind a sip of tea, Yoshino watched as her son quickly and quietly demolished his breakfast. By the time Shikamaru rested his chopsticks on his bowl with a decisive click, Yoshino was able to muster a smile.
"Have fun at school!" she said cheerfully. "And goodness, don't irritate Ino more than necessary!"
Instead of the usual groans that greeted her words, Shikamaru was silent. He seemed to mull over her words with a strange intensity that made her shift uneasily in her seat.
"Alright." His tone was unusually soft and melancholy—but not subdued. It was a strange distinction that Yoshino made instinctively, a distinction that would disquiet her when she would later reflected upon this strange interaction.
He was out the door in a flash. Yoshino bit her lip fretfully. Her Shikamaru usually dragged his feet.
"Shikaku…" she exchanged a look with her silent husband.
Shikaku gave a gruff snort. "He's just having one of his days." Despite his casual tone there was a line of tension in his hands. Both could not forget the screams that had woken them up yesterday night, nor could they forget the look Shikamaru had gave them when they had approached.
As if they were strangers.
Uchiha Sasuke squinted at the eggs sizzling in the frying pan. Judging them just about right, he turned off the stove and then carefully slid the eggs onto a waiting bowl of rice. Without even waiting for the food to cool, he dug in ravenously. Regardless of the nutrients and calcium numbers stated on those little plastic packets, ration bars tasted like shit.
Sunny mornings such as these always made the world seem a little bit less insane. As the sun and sound of rustling leaves wafted in through the open kitchen window, Sasuke found it much easier to accept the strange situation.
He had woken up on the ground with his throat raw and his back aching, again. He must have blacked out screaming. But black out or no black out, Sasuke had not forgotten those few moments of alternating clarity and insanity. He had managed to get drag himself into the house and into the shower without tripping more than twice in his unfamiliarly small body. By the time he found himself making breakfast, Sasuke had shaken off most of the anxiety. The fact he only stood chest-high to the kitchen counter was still a bit disconcerting though.
This was no genjutsu. It couldn't be a genjutsu.
Sasuke had to believe this was real. He'd survived too long to give up just yet.
"Bastard," he muttered into his bowl. This was an impossible situation, and there was only one person Sasuke knew who always seemed to do the impossible.
Trust Naruto to come up with something insane like this.
Idiot.
But although Sasuke managed to make the small leap-of-faith, it didn't explain what he was doing here in the past. Or maybe he wasn't in the past? Was he, perhaps, in another alternate reality?
"Bah." Sasuke unceremoniously dumped the dishes into sink. He would wash them later. The calendar date glaring down at him from where it hung on the wall was more annoying.
Where was he exactly? What time was he in? The year suggested he was still in his first year of Genin training, but he didn't have his forehead protector. He must still be in the Academy.
Sasuke flipped through the calendar, looking for signs. Although his neat handwriting had circled and labeled laundry days, grocery days, and even grave-visiting days, it had written little else. Sasuke glimpsed a few references to Academy training events—so, he must still be in the Academy.
Today had been circled with bright red marker. It must mean something.
Sasuke crossed his arms and leaned against the kitchen counter. He was just about to slip into an absent-minded frustrated state when he jolted upwards.
Was he the only one like this? What about the Nara and Hyuuga?
The Academy.
Sasuke slipped on his sandals and bolted out the door. He managed to stumble three times, trip twice, and outright fall only once.
It was progress.
"I heard you'll be having your Genin test today."
Hinata did not trust her voice, so she quietly nodded. If memory served her right, it wasn't as if he would notice anyway.
"Remember to be respectful."
It took all her years as a Hyuuga to keep her face perfectly controlled. Hinata allowed her eyes to skittishly drop, but the line of her back remained comfortably straight. It was as if she were merely having breakfast—
—with the dead.
"Tou-sama, when will you train me?" Hanabi didn't exactly whine but her clipped voice had an indolent curl that was so uniquely Hanabi. Hearing it again made Hinata realize she had missed it more than she thought she did. It was a dull heartache that made it difficult to swallow, but Hinata persisted. The food tasted too good to let it go to waste.
What Hinata hadn't missed was the Neji sitting on her breakfast table. This Neji was a stoic, blatantly cold presence in the simply adorned room. It was almost cute in its immature childishness, if it weren't for the annoying sneers he kept shooting her way.
As Hinata carefully ate, her pupil-less twenty-year-old eyes slowly wandered from the floor to Neji's face and back again. She unconsciously frowned.
"Hinata?" Her father's voice was appropriately cool, just mildly inquisitive, with a touch of bored curiosity. Twenty-year-old Hinata couldn't help but feel herself cringe.
"Ah, nothing," Hinata murmured, hastily smoothing her face. "Please excuse me. I don't want to be late."
She practically ran out of the room.
When she'd slid the shoji door close, she heard Hanabi comment, "Nee-san's a bit strange today, isn't she?" Her father's voice was too low to hear clearly, and frankly Hinata wasn't even sure she wanted to know.
"Hinata-sama," a maid said respectfully as Hinata ran past. Hinata remembered her. The girl would later marry one of Kiba's cousins and have two sons. Both sons would die before they reach Genin, and the mother would be one of the first to go insane from grief.
Hinata bit back a scream and focused on leaving this cursed house. Her twisted ankle still throbbed but it wasn't anything she hadn't dealt with before. Even with a good few hours of sleep and real food, she was still too tired to figure out what was going on. For now, getting to the Academy seemed like as good an idea as any.
Hinata soon realized her mistake.
The moment her sandals hit the main road she started to notice the difference. The walls all seemed strangely clean and whitewashed. Buildings rose where she was used to seeing rubble, and by the time she hit the main square, she was already beginning to feel the first signs of panic curl at the back of her head.
It must be market day. Hinata's eyes darted from stall to stall, blinded by the colorful displays of scarves and fruits that had gone so scarce during war. The sound of housewives bargaining viciously with laughing vendors, children begging for candy—it was the Konohagakure of her dreams all over again, the Konohagakure of her childhood, the peaceful pre-war Konohagakure.
But there had been a war. Hinata had lived (died?) through it.
Hinata's senses exploded. It'd been too long since she'd smell so much food, heard so much laughter, seen so many colors—she shuddered. Too panicked to consider the consequences, she fused her feet with chakra and ran cat-like up a wall. Ignoring the delighted gasps of watching civilians, she bounded off the roof. Although she stumbled slightly, she managed to jump from roof to roof gracefully enough. In her effort to escape the innocent market scene, she failed to notice a pair of sharp red eyes following her.
Fuck.
Nothing, nothing had prepared him for this. This was worse than his parents. This must, must, must be hell.
"Shikamaru! You're actually early!" Her blond hair gleamed like a ghost, and her smile was absolutely relaxed. Both of her blue eyes glittered at him.
Shikamaru could not control his face. He grimaced and roughly pushed past her, barely resisting the urge to shudder as he caught a hint of that telltale florist scent. He focused on the asphalt beneath his feet, the playground, the trees, anywhere but her face.
Oh why the hell had he gone to the Academy?
Ah yes, to run away from his 'parents'.
"Shikamaru get back here!" Her voice, high and so damn young, almost made him stop. But he was better trained than that. Even as he fumbled with this ungainly body, his mind urged him to get as far away from that demon as possible. He could fly apart later. Right now he had to escape first—
"Shikamaru!"
getawaygetawaygetaway
One step on the ground at a time. Left. Right. Left. Right—
This body was too slow. He felt a hand grab the back of his shirt. She'd always had a bad habit of doing that.
"Honestly Shikamaru, when did you get so rude—"
He was going to kill this fake Ino. Fuck the enemy who thought they could mess with him like this. Numb hands snaked down his thighs and touched bitingly cold metal. His eyes blurred as his body whipped around, focusing on that white throat—
Kill her.
Her eyes were wide. Bright blue—not quite scared, more like stunned. He could see the glint of the kunai in her eyes. Shikamaru was relentless.
Kill her.
Shikamaru sensed the incoming threat, but once again his body was too slow to respond. Something ran into him, and Shikamaru hit the ground so forcefully he was surehe heard his hipbone crack.
The enemy pressed on him. Shikamaru tried to slice the kunai sideways, but the enemy was grabbing his wrist too tightly. Shikamaru rolled his shoulders and managed to elbow the enemy's sternum. The enemy hissed but didn't let up, and pressed his knee into Shikamaru's stomach. Shikamaru choked. His blurring vision was blocked by black hair, but his ears still distantly heard herscream.
"—Stop it!"
killkillkillkill
The enemy was a strong bugger, he'll give him that. But Shikamaru had been in an unforgiving mood since the genjutsu had begun, and his bottled aggression and insanity was finally finding a nice outlet. With an animalistic snarl, Shikamaru grabbed the enemy's hair and pulled. The enemy's grip on his wrist slackened long enough for Shikamaru to roll over, pushing the enemy underneath him. He let his fist crash gtrr;u into the enemy's face. The enemy bucked and struggled, but Shikamaru was stronger. He raised his hand to give the killing blow—
Uchiha Sasuke's black eyes were too chilling to belong to a twelve-year-old face.
Suddenly Shikamaru's back was on fire. Heat sizzled through his skin and he could feel his muscle tendons snapping. Shikamaru growled. His lungs burned. Something hot grabbed his shoulders. Shikamaru let himself be pulled off, if only to be released from that bloody pain. A swift kick to his side sent him sprawling, spitting blood.
There were too many voices, too many sounds. Shikamaru pushed back the din and scrambled onto his feet.
A girl with short-black hair and a tan jacket was kneeling against Sasuke. Sasuke didn't bother to wave off the girl and let her gingerly help him to his feet. He swayed slightly and leaned on her shoulder. As the girl turned toward Shikamaru, her smooth black hair fell back to reveal bulging white eyes.
Hyuuga Hinata's stare was steady and hard—a familiar war-hardened stare. Shikamaru warily stared back.
They ignored the milling students, the watching gasping crowd. Hinata could see a glimpse of bright pink on the corner of her left eye, but she was much more concerned with the half-crazed look in Shikamaru's eyes and Sasuke's unsteady breathing.
"Shikamaru!" "What is going on—" "Sasuke-kun!"
"Are you alright?" Hinata said softly. Sasuke made a sound that might have been an amused snort.
"What is going on here?" a voice cut through the uproar. In the sudden silence, Sasuke wearily turned to glance behind. Hinata's Byagukan made such movement unnecessary, but judging from the cringe that rippled through skin, Sasuke was sure she saw.
An alive Umino Iruka gaped.
"Damn," Hinata sighed.
This time, Sasuke definitely snorted.
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